I spent most of my time during 20 years in Washington, D.C. working in a bipartisan manner on trade policy with the aim of keeping here, then bringing back, strategic industries. There was then a coalition of national security Republicans (on my side of the aisle) and labor union Democrats. Democrats did not want to lose the middle-class blue-collar jobs when factories closed. Republicans did not want to lose the industrial capacity critical to the defense base, made worse by seeing that capacity and its technology shifted to rivals like China where it shifted the balance of power.

The Democrats were by far the larger half of this coalition by at least 2-1, which did not set well with me. Not that I did not agree with their perspective. Through my undergraduate years I worked summers in factories in northern Illinois and for almost two years before I went on the graduate school. I was a spot-welder and a union member making better money than my degree in History would have provided (which is why in my second grad program I shifted to Economics). Unfortunately, the factories I worked in closed in the 1980s, shifting their production to lower-wage countries. My small town went into a depression.

A majority of Republicans in the post-Cold War Clinton and Bush years did not care about this deindustrialization wave. They were under the thumb of the Chamber of Commerce lobby in Washington which represented the larger “transnational” corporations which were moving the factories overseas (even if that meant smaller firms that belonged to local chambers were the ones being closed). The big money was with the big firms. Too many GOP politicians had fallen for the classical liberal nostrums of “free trade” put out by the libertarian proponents of “pure” capitalism. This ideology fully formed just after the Napoleonic Wars when there was another period of peace which misled people into thinking concerns about national capabilities and international competition were things of the past. That short period was followed by the bloodiest worldwide struggles in recorded history. The 1990s, however, brought in another such deluded era when it was claimed that “history was at an end” and a world polity was at hand. It was even common to hear lobbyists demand that it had become just as easy to do business between the U.S. and China s between Ohio and Texas. That was the “globalization” idea, nationalism was dead. If a global-oriented corporation made a decision, it must by classical ideology be the optimal one for all humanity. National concerns about their own people’s well-being or security were dismissed as special interest pleading.

I even heard in the halls of Congress some GOP members say they were happy to see factories close because it hurt the industrial unions that supported Democrats. This represented partisanship over nationalism as bad as when Democrat members refused to applaud when measures clearly good for the country were mentioned during President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address. A defect in character on display again as Democrats attack President Trump’s tariffs, a policy the rank-and-file of the party once advocated. In 1997, President Bill Clinton was unable to obtain “fast track trade negotiating authority” in the House because his own party would not support it. It was the GOP that pushed to give a globalist President the power to push ratification of free trade agreements through Congress without amendments and with limited debates. In this case, our coalition of a minority of nationalist Republicans and a majority of labor Democrats constituted an overall majority.

The Democrats did not trust their president for good reason. Clinton would go on and grant permanent Most Favored Nation trade status to China and sign the World Trade Agreement that “outlawed” any acts by a national government to give their own workers or industries an advantage against foreign rivals. Why would any voter support a candidate who refused to treat his constituents better than foreigners when their livelihoods depended on it, or more largely the security of their nation’s economic system was at stake? And these are existential questions in the wake of Clinton’s actions, reconfirmed by President George W. Bush, that encouraged Beijing’s military threats on an industrial base created largely by Western capital and technology transfers. A strategic blunder ranking with the worst in history that has put us on the cusp of another world war. Classical theory may not care where the steel mills, chip foundries, shipyards, research labs, aircraft plants, oil fields, and supply chains are, but the real world of power politics does.

When Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) denounces President Trump’s tariffs as “nothing more than an enormous tax hike on American consumers” he is acting as nothing more than a partisan hack. He knows one of the main reasons Kamala Harris lost the 2024 presidential election is the inflation caused by trillions of dollars in wild spending. So, he must shift the blame for inflation to President Trump. He cannot seriously consider policies meant to rebuild American industry any more than he can policies meant to reduce obscene levels of inflationary deficit spending because he cannot raise his vision to the national level. This is the old, failed “resistance” mode that the Dems resorted to during the first Trump term. In 2017, the incoming GOP President flipped the party to give the nationalist wing the majority. This is why I supported him from the moment he came down the escalator. Trump was naive enough to believe that he could work with Democrats on issues they had always supported, such as trade policy and infrastructure. But they refused then and are making that same mistake again.

To be fair, President Trump has not clearly distinguished in his public statements the differences between revenue tariffs, protective tariffs, and tariffs as negotiating tools. A 10% tariff across the board will not be enough to prompt the large-scale movement of factories back to the U.S. Many, perhaps most, foreign exporters and American importers will simply absorb this to avoid price hikes that would reduce sales. This will generate needed revenue but will not drive consumers to purchase from domestic production, which is the aim of the much higher protective tariffs. Trump is concentrating these high tariffs on strategic industries like steel, autos, chips, pharmaceuticals, and critical minerals. They are also aimed at China. Combined with “energy independence,” the goal is truly to liberate America from foreign economic pressure. We cannot be the leader of the Free World if we are not ourselves free.

Just as energy development requires investment to build productive capacity, tariffs will have to be supported by investment as well. Consumers can avoid, and it is desired that they do avoid, paying tariffs by not buying foreign-made goods. They should “Buy American” if the capital is available to “Build American.” Reducing the Federal budget deficits is part of this campaign as deficits take money out of the capital pool and spends it on wasteful government boondoggles tied to special interests and failed theories, the hallmark of post-pandemic Democrat policies. The Democrats have traded away a productive working class for nonproductive bureaucrats and disruptive fringe groups. They cannot be considered a national party again until they embrace policies that have positive national objectives.

The other element needed is skilled labor. Decades of industrial decline have not just shrunk the high end of the labor force, it has seen it age as it did not seem to offer opportunities for younger workers to enter industrial careers. This is a problem in the defense industrial base as current conflicts have exposed. Trump addresses this in his national emergency fact sheet.  

Too many students go off to college in majors that will never provide lucrative employment, one reason Gen X is so restive and depressed. I benefitted from my years of factory work, and not just because it provided me with stories to tell my economics classes as a professor. The pay was good, the work was stable, there was a comradeship in the breakroom (and in the bar across the street), and you could actually see that what you were doing had value. There is a real social as well as an economic need to rebuild industry. And it should appeal to Democrats now as it did in the past.

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